David Tennant takes on "Hamlet" as part of "Shakespeare Uncovered," airing over three weeks on PBS.

By Kate O’HareZap2it

Saying his name evokes images of silver-tongued actors in elaborate costumes, stage sword fights, long-winded speeches, lofty language and august academics. But in reality, the resolutely middle-class, grammar-school-educated William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was a hardworking dramatist. poet and sometime actor who juggled writing what turned out to be immortal sonnets, dramas, histories and comedies with performing, running an acting company, managing a theater, and sending money back home to support the wife and kids.

There's a persistent belief among some enthusiasts that the Bard of Avon, as he came to be called (having been born and raised in Stratford-on-Avon), didn't actually write his plays, which were instead the work of one or another university-educated nobleman of the same period.

Contact information ( * required )

Richard Denton, producer of the documentary series "Shakespeare Uncovered," airing Fridays, Jan. 25 through Feb. 8, on PBS (check local listings), takes a dim view of this assertion, especially considering the inherent competitiveness of the Elizabethan Age's leading dramatists.

"I think that's nonsense," he says. "Conspiracy theories are enormous fun, but there has to be a really plausible explanation why everybody kept quiet about it at the time, why all his friends decided to put together a book of all of his collected works, including one of his great rivals.

"Ben Johnson would never have put his name to the complete works of Shakespeare -- he probably did it through gritted teeth anyway -- if he hadn't written it.

"It's an absurd idea. It's like 'The Da Vinci Code' and the fact that the world didn't end" on Dec. 21.

"They're irresistible, but they're just all rubbish."

Of course, some argue that a man without a great deal of advanced education couldn't possibly have written such high-minded works as "Hamlet," "Macbeth," "Henry V" and "King Lear." Denton thinks that's, well, much ado about nothing.

"That's their problem," he says of the doubters, "and they have to ask themselves why they feel that. In the end, what's special about Shakespeare isn't his scholarship; it's his heart. It's his understanding of human nature. It's his ability to put that into words, but none of those things depends upon a great education."

The six films that make up Season 1 of "Shakespeare Uncovered" aim to look behind the stories of some of the Bard's most celebrated plays, with the help of some of today's most celebrated actors and directors. They are:

As to where the idea for the series came from, Denton says, "I suppose it originated in my role as a father. I wanted to introduce my children to Shakespeare, and I wanted to make sure they didn't say, 'I hate Shakespeare, Dad,' because I would have killed them. And people frown on that. They don't think the fact that children didn't like Shakespeare was a justifiable reason for ending their lives.

"That's a bad joke, but anyway ... it was truly that I wanted to infuse my children."

Denton started by showing Baz Luhrmann's 1996 "Romeo & Juliet," with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, which transposes the play's original language into a contemporary setting. Later, on a ride to school, Denton's teen son -- who, his father says, "obviously wanted something" -- professed his affection for the movie. Denton recalls that the lad, pressed to come up with a favorite line, "said, 'When she woke up in the tomb, and she finds the bottle (of poison) that he's used, and she says, 'You left no friendly drop for me.' And I nearly crashed the car.

"I thought, here's something written 400 years ago, that traveled through time and burst into the consciousness of a 13- or 14-year-old boy in the 21st century -- and means something. I thought, Shakespeare isn't difficult, from that point of view.

"The heart of Shakespeare is that he understands how people feel and how people think and how people work, and that works. I thought to myself, 'This is worth doing, to break through the prejudices, just the idea that Shakespeare's too difficult and too old and not really worth it.'

Get great articles like this sent to your inbox!

Guidelines: Keep it civil and on topic; no profanity, vulgarity, slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about tragedies will be blocked.
If a comment violates these standards or our terms of service, click the X in the upper right corner of the comment box. To find our more, read our FAQ.